‘Childhood in Everyday Life’

6-8 June 2016 Turku, Finland

The international conference on childhood studies (http://www.childhood2016.fi) is a multidisciplinary forum for research on children and childhood. The event is organized by the Finnish Society for Childhood Studies and the Child and Youth Research Institute CYRI on 6^th– 8^th June 2016 in the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Finland. The theme of the seventh conference is Childhood in Everyday Life.

The keynote speakers are:

– Professor Emeritus Jonathan Bradshaw (University of York, UK)

– Professor Anja Huizink (VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

– Professor Simo Vehmas (University of Helsinki, Finland)

– Associate Professor Patrick Ryan (King’s College, Western University, Canada)

The conference offers possibilities for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas for researchers who work with children or child related issues. We welcome papers that relate to the main theme Childhood in Everyday Life from different viewpoints. These abstract topics include but are not limited to:

1. equality and inequality
2. well-being and health
3. food and eating
4. play, sports and leisure time
5. social relations
6. consumption and market economy
7. upbringing and education
8. protection and safety
9. mobility and segregation
10. class, ethnicity and culture
11. change and continuity
12. history and future
13. technology
14. media
15. disability
16. diversity
17. special childhoods or special needs
18. some other viewpoint

A proposal can be submitted for individual paper presentation, poster presentation, self-organised symposium or workshop.

Deadline for submission of abstracts is 31^st January 2016.

For more information and detailed guidelines, please see http://www.childhood2016.fi/

We warmly welcome you to Turku!

Scientific Committee and Organizing Committee

For further information, see: www.childhood2016.fi/
Inquiries: child2016@utu.fi
Find us also in twitter: www.twitter.com/childhood2016

IV INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
Ethnographic Encounters with Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults in Educational Contexts

&

I INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
of Qualitative Research with the Participation of Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults

UNIOESTE – Campus de Foz do Iguaçu
Brazil
April 28 and 29, 2016

ACADEMIC COMMITTEE

Regina Coeli Machado e Silva – Brasil – UNIOESTE – Campus de Foz do Iguaçu

Ángeles Clemente – México – Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca

Maria Dantas-Whitney – USA – Western Oregon University

Alba-Lucy Guerrero – Colombia –  Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá

Diana Milstein – Argentina – FACE/Universidad Nacional del Comahue y CIS-COMICET/Instituto de Desarrollo Económico y Social

BACKGROUND

The IV International Symposium “Ethnographic Encounters with Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults in Educational Contexts” intends to strengthen the research threads developed in the three previous symposia about ethnography with children and youth that took place in November 2009 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in October 2011 in Bogotá, Colombia, and in November 2013 in Oaxaca, Mexico.

In Buenos Aires, the symposium opened a space for discussions on the role of children and adolescents in the production of social knowledge. In Bogotá, the event featured ethnographic investigations on how children, adolescents, and youth become involved in social, educational, political and cultural dynamics, and how these actors exercise their agency to propose alternative possibilities for the transformation of their identities and everyday lives. In Oaxaca, the presentations focused on the dynamic involvement, agency, and commitment of all participants in ethnographic research: investigators, children, adolescents, young adults, and other actors.

A selection of papers from the 2009 symposium was published in 2011 by Miño y Dávila; and a second selection of papers from the 2011 symposium is in the process of publication by Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. A publication of selected papers from the third symposium is in its planning stages.

For this forth symposium, we have expanded the call for papers to include all forms of qualitative research. We hope to foster dialog among investigators employing different methods for advancing knowledge about educational processes with the participation of children, adolescents, and youth.

OBJECTIVES

• To bring together results of ethnographic research studies (completed or in process of completion) which examine and problematize political and cultural processes in educational contexts.
• To develop epistemological, theoretical and methodological discussions about the involvement of children, adolescents and youth as collaborators in social qualitative research in general, and in ethnographic research in particular.

THEMATIC THREADS AND OPEN QUESTIONS

We invite papers that explore and problematize issues related to educational processes in diverse sociocultural and geographic contexts through collaborative research with children, adolescents, and youth. Relevant topics include:

• Spaces, times, and everyday life
• Bodies and ways of knowing
• Cultural construction of identities/subjectivities
• Political praxis and citizen formation in educational contexts
• Language and cultural processes
• Mediated and virtual contexts of socialization
• Educational experiences in rural and urban contexts
• Ethnographic praxis
• Gender and sexuality
• Race and ethnicity
• Social class, nationality and religion
• Age and generation
• Violence, resistance, and peaceful resolution

We hope to engage in discussions centered on the following questions:

• How do we understand intercultural interaction in schools and in other spaces of socialization?
• How can or do children, adolescents, and youth participate in the process of social research?
• How are ethnographic/qualitative reflexive processes integrated with the children’s, adolescents’, and youth’s ideas, works, dreams and actions?
• What is the benefit of ethnographic/qualitative research in the construction of subjectivity among children, adolescents, and youth?
• What are possibilities of adult research with children, adolescents, and youth for transforming educational and cultural processes?

FORMAT OF THE SYMPOSIUM

Papers may be summited in Portuguese, Spanish, or English. The complete papers will be available in advance for all symposium participants. In that way, sessions can be devoted entirely to discussions on issues, and approaches of the papers. The number of papers will be limited (40 papers maximum) in order to maintain a high level of interaction during the two days of the symposium. It is important that abstracts provide clear evidence of their theoretical and methodological contributions to the themes of the symposium. Members of the Academic Committee will work during 2017 on the compilation of a book containing selected studies from the symposium.

Deadline for submission of abstracts: February 2, 2016

Deadline for notification of acceptance of abstracts: February 12, 2016

Deadline for submission of full papers: April 10, 2016

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

The abstract must be attached as a Word file not exceeding 500 words. It must state the title of the paper, authors’ names, and institution affiliation, as well as:

• Topic and issues being addressed
• Purpose of the investigation
• Theoretical and methodological references, with particular mention of the collaborative aspects of the research
• References to field work and preliminary analysis
• Relevance of the study

Please send your abstract via email to encuentrosetnograficos@gmail.com. Only one proposal per each presenter will be accepted. Notification of accepted papers will be made on February 12, 2016 via email.

SUBMISSION OF COMPLETE PAPERS

If your abstract is accepted, please submit your complete paper as a pdf file on April 10, 2016 via email to encuentrosetnograficos@gmail.com. Complete papers should not exceed 8,000 words; and they should include an abstract, which can include minor changes from the original abstract previously submitted. For the complete paper, please include: (1) introduction, where objectives and theoretical framework are stated; (2) specific methodological aspects highlighting collaborative work with children, adolescents and/or youth; (3) description of field work, data, and analysis; (4) discussion and exploration of results and implications; (5) conclusions, which must be brief and clear; and (6) reference list, including only the cited documents within the paper.

LOGISTICS OF PRESENTATIONS

Presentations will be done in sessions lasting 30 minutes each. Only one paper will be presented and discussed in each session. The authors will have 10 minutes to present their paper orally; and the remaining 20 minutes will be used to ask questions and exchange ideas about the papers. Chairs for each presentation will be chosen among the symposium participants. The role of the chairs is to manage time and facilitate discussion.

PARTICIPANTS MUST READ THE PAPERS BEFORE THE PRESENTATIONS. Therefore, the papers will be made available as of April 15, 2016.

Workshop
Collaborative research with children, adolescences and youth: Possibilities and limitations

A workshop will be offered to all participants from both symposia to engage in discussions about ethnographic/qualitative research in collaboration with children, adolescents and youth.

ROUNDTABLES

Two roundtables will be conducted at the end of each working day. They will be open to the public. Topics and participants will be organized according to the accepted papers.

Horrible Histories? Children’s Lives in Historical Contexts

16 and 17 June 2016
King’s College London

It is now over forty years since the bold declaration of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause that ‘The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken’. Stirred by such claims, scholars have subsequently tested the ‘nightmare thesis’ for both the pre-modern and modern eras, locating children’s agency in unexpected places and stressing the contingencies of context, gender, ethnicity, age, class, caste and sexuality. Narratives of historic and contemporary institutional abuse, however, together with insights concerning the legacies of forced child migration, children’s labours and other challenging aspects of childhood experience, suggest that sorrow rather than joy characterises much scholarship on children and childhood. Should this be so?

In another context, since 1993 the phenomenally successful Horrible Histories books, stage plays and television series have helped introduce countless thousands of children around the world to the past. As their titles indicate, Horrible Histories also examine difficult and sometimes grisly historical episodes. Progressive narratives are at work here too, reinforced by children’s museum exhibits emphasising an emergence from the ‘dark ages’ of childhood in the twentieth century.

‘Horrible Histories? Children’s Lives in Historical Contexts’ is the launch conference marking the inauguration of the new UK-based Children’s History Society. Offering a forum for historical reflections from established and upcoming historians of children, childhood and youth, we also anticipate that this will be a platform for school-age scholars to reflect on the ways they respond to the history. This two-day conference invites paper proposals on the following themes:

• Dealing with difficult history and heritage
• Children’s histories and the longue durée
• The ‘West and the rest’ in children’s history
• Definitions of subjecthood and status
• Pain and resilience
• Archival approaches for retrieving children’s agency
• The things of childhood
• Play as protest, recreation and the ‘work’ of childhood
• Children’s histories in museums, online and in the media
• The histories of children’s places and places for children
• Future trajectories for researching children’s histories

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a two-page CV, to both simon.sleight@kcl.ac.uk and M.C.H.Martin@greenwich.ac.uk by 1 December 2015. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in January. Panel submissions featuring three papers of 15-20 minutes apiece are also encouraged, particularly for panels showcasing in concert transnational and/or long chronological perspectives. Note that our definition of children is flexible, reflecting the multiple constructions through time of childhood as a social category.

The conference will be free to attend, courtesy of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and the Department of History, both at King’s College London. Further details will follow regarding accommodation options, conference-related activities and Society administration. If you would like to become involved in the running of the Children’s History Society, please email simon.sleight@kcl.ac.uk and M.C.H.Martin@gre.ac.uk to express your interest by the 1 December deadline.

You can follow the progress of the Children’s History Society on Twitter and Facebook:

https://twitter.com/histchild and https://www.facebook.com/histchild/

Warm regards,

Dr Simon Sleight (King’s College London) and Dr Mary Clare Martin (University of Greenwich).

Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London // Centre for the Study of Play and Recreation, University of Greenwich